Faculty Advisors for ICT

E-Wickersley @ Wickersley School and Sports College

Enquiry-based learning

A webquest is an enquiry-based learning tool designed to encourage students to become responsible for their own learning.

It involves providing students with a specified task, the activities to support that task, and links to information available on the web which the students should use to acquire knowledge in order to complete the task.

A webquest can fit well into a scheme of work, and the duration may vary from a single lesson to a series of lessons within a topic.

It's adaptable

It's motivating

Students develop useful social/team building skills

They encourage higher-order thinking

This is the initial stimulus material that acts as a 'hook' for the student and engages them with the task.

This could be a real-life situation, for example the Amistad slave ship case or a fantasy scenario such as a time machine that takes students to a place or event in the past.

This is the opportunity for the teacher to be as creative as possible. The task must have a realistic and achievable outcome, but could take a variety of formats such as a whole-class debate, a multimedia presentation or a written description.

Explain carefully the steps you want your pupils to take to complete the webquest. You may wish to encourage them to work in groups, and decide among themselves how to divide up the task.

You may also provide tips for searching for the relevant information, or general ICT-based advice such as opening new links in a new window. It can be a good idea to give a quick example using an interactive whiteboard, if possible, to reinforce your written instructions.

Try to embed a variety of links in each step of the activities, testing different skills all the time to vary the learning outcome.

By placing specific pointers to relevant information in your webquest, you are limiting the amount of ‘free’ surfing your pupils will be able to do and therefore encouraging them to focus on the information needed for the task.

The links should be embedded in the webquest, and should link to sites, pages, email contacts, databases, search engines, case studies, audio and visual clips and so on.

This in no way means that pupils should not also use printed resources and books: in fact, the use of these both supports the webquest and widens the skills base required to complete the task.

This stage provides the student with the marking criteria and allows them to understand how their work will be assessed, both in terms of their individual work and their contribution to a team.

This insight encourages the student to become self-evaluative and provides the critical steps needed to make progress.

To conclude the webquest, pupils must be aware of what they have discovered from the activity and the processes that have brought them to the end of the task.

They should have a final piece of work to support their findings, which they can then present to the class or display on a wall.

Pupils should be able to see how the findings of their quest fit into work they have done previously or will be doing in the future.

The conclusion should also allow space to expand the topic, if necessary, and encourage pupils to use webquests for future pieces of work.

Belle Wallace: Thinking Actively in a Social Context

http://www.webquestuk.org.uk/TASC%20WHEEL/Wheel.htm

http://www.webquest.org/index.php

http://bestwebquests.com/

http://www.techteachconcepts.com/webquests1.htm#Art%20WebQuests

http://www.techtrekers.com/webquests/